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The Rise of Fascism In America

Some of us have been discussing this since Trump was elected. Many of you out there have claimed that we’re reacting too strongly, that we’re not plausible, that we just “don’t like” Trump, and a million other excuses.

You can stop trying now. You Trump supporters need to look in the mirror. You are supporting concentration camps on US soil.

Let that sink in. You are supporting fascism in America. And you are doing it willingly. Your protests at this point ring rather hollow since we told you before that this would happen! And you ignored it.

I can say that evangelical pastors seem to finallybe standing up against Trump, but they were fine with everything else. They were fine with persecuting LGBT people. They were fine with Republicans openly talking about “camps” for Muslims. They were fine with persecuting Hispanics or anyone else with skin darker than their own.

But the children! This is where their “pro-life” lies hit the road. They don’t want those kids separated from their parents but they do want them deported, even though seeking asylum is not a crime!

None of those people were “illegal immigrants”. They were asylum seekers. And Jeff Sessions just declared that rampant violence and murder in your home nation are no longer valid reasons to request asylum in the US.

And Ted Cruz? He’s not trying to solve this in a humane manner. His proposal to add hundreds of immigration judges is just an attempt to clear the issue from the campaign trail, so he won’t have to talk about it in a race in Texas where Cruz might lose because of outraged Hispanic voters.

The interesting thing is to note that Trump opposes Cruz’s “solution”. Why would he do that? Because he wants the terror, fear, and confusion that his policy is currently creating. He wants threatened people fearful so they shut up. He wants allies of those threatened to also be afraid, so they might shut up as well. And he wants as many others to be outraged because he mistakes outrage for control.

He’s right, in a sense, because if your outrage does not have you right now questioning the legitimacy of the current US government, then your morality is sadly lacking.

We have Jeff Sessions openly talking about finding a “permanent solution” to the “immigration crisis”. Do you even understand how eerily close to Heinrich Himmler this sounds? I’ll tell you now that soon Trump and his cronies will be talking about how “expensive” holding these kids are, even as Fox News runs photos of immigrant children playing with toy guns and claiming the kids are a “threat” to society. They’re going to guilt white America over higher taxes needed to pay for this terror campaign, and white America will gladly oblige and demand no more spending!

What then? If you can’t provide them shelter, food, clothing, and medical care, what is the alternative? Why, to “dispose” of them, of course. We’ll see what euphemism they choose for this atrocity, but make no mistake, Stephen Miller, a known white supremacist and neo-Nazi is the man in the White House driving this bus. And he’s made it very clear he wants brown people expunged from the US completely, by any means possible.

Yet you, Republican voters, won’t vote for a Democrat because they’re “liberals”, as if that’s some dirty word, even as your own party commits atrocity after atrocity and gets worse with each passing week. You’ll believe that somehow you can change Trump’s direction, but you can’t. And by the time the terror has reached your doorstep, it will be too late, won’t it?

I am reminded of the words of JRR Tolkien, that he wrote for Gandalf the Grey, in The Lord of the Rings, when speaking to Frodo about frightening times in which to live. “’I wish it need not have happened in my time,’ said Frodo. ‘So do I,’ said Gandalf, ‘and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.’”

And that is what we now face. “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.’” We must decide, and soon, and once we start down that road, there will be no turning back, because down that road we may face the choice that standing up for what is right, to stand against the persecution and murder of the innocent, could cost us our lives too.

I wish I could dismiss your post as hysterical. I do not think this is the case.
I watch this tragedy from the relative safety of Australia but we have a fearful cringing ultra conservative fringe here too. The danger is to believe this couldn’t happen in a modern, rich nation.
It obviously can.
I used to dismiss hard righters as stupid haters. They are a lot more than that. And it scares me that I still can’t understand what drives this obviously large cohort. Their world view is very different to mine. I think I can observe those who profess to be religious have a very, very different view of god to mine. Those who are more secular share with their religious comrades an urgent sense of fear and scarcity.
I fear that your current administration will do so much damage to the social fabric of the US and more widely that it will take a long time to recover.
It sounds like pissing in the wind but all you and I can do is live our principles publically and hope to influence positively those around us. The old addage about evil prevailing when the good do nothing comes to mind.
Stay strong,
Geraldine

Xenophobic nationalism, of which fascism is one modern variant, seems to arise almost periodically in human history. We think we’re immune because we’re “modern”, have technology, have science… but we’re not.

Some people fear change, especially change that seems radical to them. And to be blunt, white America has treated all non-whites so terribly that I honestly think some of them fear that non-whites will treat them the same way when they lose majority status, which is close to happening in the US. Projections put that around 2040 or 2050 when whites will be less than 50% of the US population.

So people fear that. They fear the loss of good paying jobs too. But they think those things happen automatically, when they did not. Our grandparents and great-grandparents fought for a 40 hour work week, health insurance, minimum wage, etc. And I do mean physically fought, with violence, against greedy monsters who wanted them to live like serfs or slaves.

The descendants of those union people are now mentally conditioned by right wing liars to hate unions. And in hating unions, their own wages and jobs come under risk. But instead they are taught to hate people who are different from them for “stealing” their jobs. Those jobs aren’t being stolen. They are being bid downward, to lower and lower wage levels, by the capitalists who own the means of production.

I could go on, but these people have been conditioned to support policies that harm them yet are repeatedly fed lies that those policies will help them “someday”. And they are fed this steady diet of hate, and blame for anyone different from themselves.

The right wing, at least in the US, has become a literal cult, believing verifiable lies, and trusting in authority figures. They can’t be helped. They are beyond help. All we can hope for is that there remain enough unconditioned people who will vote against these right wing monsters before our right to vote is also taken away.

I don’t think it is possible to support Trump and not be a fascist at heart. Fascists are born not created. It’s genetic with them. We need to be concentrating are efforts on the GOP base more than the orange menace. The hypocrisy of the Trumpians is astounding. We should IMO confront, and ridicule them.

We should flag their posts and youtube channels and when confronting them on social media we should call them Russian trolls because that is exactly what they are.